Lord, the cold is creeping in the narrow alleyways
making barren and inhospitable the old refuges
I feel it in my bones—this may be my last winter
Long have I shuffled through these broken streets [Read more...]

Mela Kirkpatrick
Saul’s horse knew the secret art
of conversion, the sudden buck
that throws a man so the back of his head
thuds the hard earth just so,
the momentary loss of orientation,
and then, above,
the quiet intensity of noon’s light
paralyzing the senses. [Read more…]

There are things that despite the passage of time tenaciously remain unchanged. And love like a lingering wound, though it may heal, leaves a scar which never fades, never wanes.

I first met Emilia when my mother asked me to collect from her mother, Mrs. Rivera, the fifty pesos she owed her. That was actually the third time that I was dispatched by my mother to their house, which to me looked more like a chicken coop painted white. At first, I did not like the idea of wasting half an hour going there and back. I wanted to be with my cousins flying kites in the fields, but Papa’s thick leather belt nudged me into obeying my mother’s request.

This third time visiting Mrs. Rivera’s house was like the first two: no one answered my knocking. But since the front door was left ajar, I gave in to the temptation of peering in to take a look inside their little shanty. The house was bare and very dark with unwashed dishes lying all over the place. A faded picture of Our Lady was the sole adornment inside. I noticed a little girl leaving from the back door. [Read more…]

Well, answer me, for God’s love, Christ, speak up—
Explain Your perfect Paradise to me,
Where Clare and Francis sup (quite possibly)
With those who poison your once-sacred cup:
With rapists, killers, child-molesting priests,
Where Stalin (maybe, through Your holy grace)
Meets tortured gulag inmates face to face
And sings hosannahs at the endless feast!
Yes, You forgive us, Lord, I know that part—
But we’re just human, Jesus, You forget,
So how can we forgive what we have done?
— Oh, wait. . . Your human mother’s human heart
Was pierced by me, and each of us, and yet
She loves me still, the killer of her Son.

“For the poor souls in purgatory,” I heard my father mutter through clenched teeth. Through the shadows of the upstairs hallway, I could often see my father in my parents’ darkened room, his hands wound around his foot or grasping his knee. He always got ready for work at Sydney harbor in the dark so as not to wake mum. It was his habit to offer the inevitable bumps into furniture for the dead not yet in heaven.

It would be fair to say that mum and my father believed in God. [Read more…]

The abortion debate has become mired in confusion over the interpretation of science. Abortion advocates have generated much of this confusion in two ways: first, they assert that science is on their side through their reduction of an unborn child in early developmental stages to “a few cells” or simply “fetal tissue” that is not yet a human being; second, they deny the validity of a religiously inspired stance as anti-science and based on unprovable, dogmatic metaphysics.

The proposition that science supports abortion is inherently flawed because science in and of itself is incapable of making moral judgments. It is objective, empirical, and non-partisan. Experimentation and scientific results present us with fact, not ethical analysis. Science forms the raw material upon which decisions of acceptability must be made: the fact that a biological human being during its developmental process consists of only a bundle of cells—only a single cell at its beginning point!—does not tell us whether we can justifiably destroy him or her during that phase. This requires ontology: a metaphysical analysis of the nature of a human being and what constitutes life.

On Thursday, August 26, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Richard C. Casey issued a ruling striking down the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Legally speaking, it was an unremarkable and entirely expected result. Four years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart that a similar Nebraska state ban was unconstitutional. But Judge Casey’s opinion attracted attention for different reasons – not least of which is that he is a devout Catholic. [Read more…]

Purchase
Featuring “Stabbed Through the Heart for the Sake of the Fat Lady: Beauty and ‘Catholic Fiction’” by Travis LaCouter, Honorable Mentions to the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, and visual art by Fabrice Poussin.

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